Amazon.com description: Product Description: This book examines the interlingual, cross-cultural transmission of the Bible in contemporary languages, underscoring the importance of employing a context-based methodology in translation. This study is essentially about communication, more specifically, the interlingual, cross-cultural transmission of the Bible in contemporary languages. But the goal goes farther than that: based on the assumption that the various books of the Bible are examples of excellent 'literature' (or 'orature'), over and above being supremely theological and ethical texts, the challenge is to translate them not only accurately, but also with corresponding beauty and forcefulness in the diverse target languages of today's world. How is this complex task to be carried out? These chapters illustrate a strongly text/context-based methodology for both analyzing the biblical texts at hand, the New Testament epistles of James, Philemon, 1 Peter, and 1 John in particular, and also when researching the local target language for the artistic and rhetorical resources needed to attain an acceptable degree of 'literary functional equivalence' (LiFE) in the translation. Special attention is given to phonological factors, the 'oral-rhetorical' dimension of discourse - how the biblical text actually sounds in the original text and resounds again in translation. Various insights derived from the methodology of 'performance criticism' are utilized in this study, which aims ultimately at 'proclaiming' the Word of God in the most effective way possible for a specific target audience, using the particular vernacular style and medium of communication best suited for the task.